The present invention relates in general to a word information storage and retrieval device and, more particularly, to an electronic translator for providing efficient and rapid retrieval of any desired word or words stored therein.
Recently, a new type of electronic device called an electronic translator has been available on the market. The electronic translator differs from conventional types of electronic devices in that the former is of a unique structure which provides for efficient and rapid retrieval of word information stored in a memory. An example of such an electronic interpreter was disclosed in Levy U.S. Pat. No. 4,158,236, June 12, 1979, "ELECTRONIC DICTIONARY AND LANGUAGE INTERPRETER".
Usually, conventional electronic translators do not store phrases as entry words because of limited capacity of a memory.
Instead, a phase is stored in association with a specific word (typically, the most important word of the phase) which is treated as an entry word in the translator. In such a case, the electronic translator may contain a translated word equivalent to the phrase, the stored phrase being associated with a specific word in the input phrase, but not associated with any other word of the phrase.
If the specific word associated with the phrase in memory is entered, the translator will search such a phrase base upon this specific word. However, if any other word of the phrase is entered, the phrase can not be retrieved.
To eliminate the above described inconvenience, it is desirable to obtain a translation of a phrase, directly in response to the input of the phrase.